


Pretty Little Runaway

by ladydirewolf1



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Cold Weather, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Kiss, Minor Petyr Baelish/Sansa Stark, Older Man/Younger Woman, On the Run, Past Rape/Non-con, Petyr Baelish is His Own Warning, Sex, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladydirewolf1/pseuds/ladydirewolf1
Summary: Sansa Stark fled her old life for the wilds of Alaska, but even the north can't save her from the past. Jaime Lannister thought he was taking an ordinary job tracking down a runaway girl. When the snow starts to fall, and the winds begin to rise, two lost souls in need of comfort collide.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark
Comments: 19
Kudos: 57





	1. One

Jaime tapped his boots against the door of Winter Town Bar, knocking them free from the crust of snow they’d accumulated on the walk over from his Jaguar down the street. Pushing inside, Jaime let his gaze sweep over the dim interior as he unzipped his leather jacket. A few older men played poker in the corner, eyeing him through a cloud of cigarette smoke. The woman behind the counter met his eyes, then went back to wiping down her glasses.

He’d start with her.

Putting on his prettiest smile, Jaime pulled out one of the wooden barstools and settled down with a groan. “Give me your cheapest bourbon. Neat, please.”

“Rough day?” the bartender asked, setting down a glass.

“Just not used to all this damn snow,” he answered, glancing out the side window. Snowflakes drifted against the pale grey sky, accumulating in a few inches along the sill.

“You must not be from around here,” she said with a chuckle. “That’s what we call a dusting up in these parts.”

Jaime grimaced. “I’d hate to see what constitutes any worse.” As the bartender turned to fill his glass, he let his eyes wander over her. She was good-looking, with that mop of curly red hair and an apron stretched around her wide hips. Maybe pushing thirty. The kind of woman who should’ve left this fucking frozen, Alaskan town long ago.

“Oh, you’ll see it before long. Weather man’s been hyping up a storm since Tuesday.” The woman turned back and set a filled glass down before him. “So?” she asked, cocking one brow.

“So?”

“What’s a man who’s never seen snow doing up in these parts?”

Jaime hid a smile with a sip of bourbon. “Business.”

“Fishin’?”

“No. I’m…” Jamie set his drink down and glanced over his shoulder. The men playing poker were far too into their cups and game to be paying him any attention. “I’m looking for someone. A girl.”

The bartender’s lips pursed. “We’re not that kind of establishment.”

“No, I don’t mean…no.” Jaime cleared his throat. “A specific girl. Young woman, I should say. Nineteen years old, very pretty, red hair like yours,” he said, eyeing the bartender’s curls.

This time it was the bartender’s turn to eye Jaime up and down, her lips still pressed tight with uncertainty. “Why’d you want her?”

“Like I said, I’m looking for her.”

“You a cop?”

“No.”

“She your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see a reason why I should tell you about some poor girl just because you’re askin’. If she is in town, that is.”

Jaime took a sip of his bourbon. When he set it back down, his fingers curled around the glass, tapping anxiously. He watched them. The bartender was watching too. “I hate to…bother a busy woman like you…”

“Ros.”

“Ros.” He smiled around her name. “It’s a bit of a complicated issue…a _family_ issue.” Jaime sighed and met Ros’s eyes. “It’s my daughter I’m looking for.”

The bartender’s brows shot up at that. “Seriously?”

“You know how it goes,” Jaime said, waving his point off. “Married fresh out of high school, had my daughter not long after that. She grows up with her mother, mother unfortunately passed away a couple months ago. And now I’m here.” Jaime glanced out the window. The sky was darker now, the snow thicker. He shivered, despite the warmth of the bar. “Chasing my daughter all the way to Alaska so I can bring her home.” His eyes drifted back to Ros. The woman’s pout had vanished, replaced by sugar-sweet pity.

“Yeah…I’ve seen a girl like that around,” Ros said, leaning in close over the counter. “Poor thing showed up about a week ago, dressed like it was fucking springtime.”

“But she’s ok? Unhurt?” Ros nodded. “Alone?”

“Seems like it. Came in here one morning looking for work and a roof. Pretty girl like that, she’d do well with tips here, but I can’t risk hiring underage. Told her to look in at Craster’s Diner a twenty miles north from here.”

“You think they took her on?”

Ros shrugged. “Possibly.”

“What about the roof?”

“If she got work at Craster’s, then she likely got a place nearby. Old geezer who runs the place, he rents out summer cabins to townsfolk sometimes. On a good day, they’re in walking distance from the diner.”

“And on a bad day?”

Ros chuckled. “Mister, you don’t want to be in Winterfell on a bad day.”

“Noted,” Jaime replied, gulping down the last of his bourbon. He dug into his pocket for his wallet and pulled out two twenties. “I appreciate the help. Truly,” he said, sliding the bills towards her.

“You just find your girl, ok? Already enough of those pretty little runaways out here,” she said softly. “Winterfell don’t need another.”

Jaime nodded, gave Ros a smile, and zipped his jacked back up to his chin. As he stepped back into the frigid January air, his smile dipped into a smirk.

_Pretty little runaway_ , he thought, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he made his way back to the car.

Sansa Stark wouldn’t be running for much longer.

* * *

“Oh my _God_ ,” Sansa murmured. She tipped her face up towards the shower head and let the hot water run down her skin in rivets. Waist-length hair clung to her back like a curtain. Soap bubbles swirled at her feet before the drain sucked them down. Sansa laid her hand against the cracked wall tiles and smiled, truly smiled, for the first time in more than a week.

It was also, she hated to admit, her first hot shower in even longer.

Sansa basked in the little luxury of it all, pruning her fingertips and heating her body to the bone. All of those rides in the passenger seat of semis, countless nights sleeping in a sweatshirt on a park bench, the three terrifying days hiding out in a coal truck headed north into Canada…

She would wash it all down the drain. All of it, and her old life too. This was the middle of no-where, for God’s sake. She’d made it from Georgia to Alaska. She was alive. And she was free.

The water grew cold before Sansa finally shut the tap off.

With one towel wrapped around her body, and one around her hair, Sansa opened the door of the bathroom. Steam curled into the main, and only, room of the cabin. The old pipes the girl at Craster’s had warned her about groaned. Sansa padded across the room to her duffle bag on the dresser, humming softly to herself as she began digging for a fresh set of underwear. Sansa spotted her favorite pair down beneath her muddy jeans, a little black pair spotted with strawberries, and reached down into the bag.

“Cute.”

Sansa shrieked and whipped around, her towel clutched to her chest. A man sat in the corner armchair, grinning lazily back at her with a gun laying across his lap.

A silver gun. _Her_ gun. And the only weapon she had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back, and so excited to be sharing a story with you all again! I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post, so if you like this story, and if you like AU's, please check out my story "Downstream," a 1970s Jaime/Sansa AU. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and please share all of your thoughts below! I'd love to hear what you think about the story so far, and things you'd like to see in it.


	2. Two

“Who are you?” Sansa breathed out, eyes darting over the man watching her. He was handsome, with cropped golden blonde hair. In his early thirties, maybe, with a hint of stubble along a hard jaw. She tried to place him. Couldn’t. Sansa took a quick breath and gripped her towel tighter. “What do you want?”

The man rose to his feet and stepped over to the door, staring out at the woods through the little panel of glass. Standing up, she could see he was taller than her, and well-muscled too. A leather jacket hugged his shoulders, falling to the waist of clean black jeans. _Expensive, by the look of it all._

“Let me explain your current circumstances, Miss Stark,” the man drawled. Sansa stiffened at her name. She hadn’t used that name in over a year. “That burner phone you have tucked in your bag? It doesn’t get a signal out here.” Sansa glanced at her duffle as the man continued. “Oh, by all means, try it out for yourself. But I’d warn against draining the battery—I’m afraid your charger found the wrong end of a pair of scissors,” he said, moving over to the kitchenette. He opened a cabinet, barely even glancing at the supplies she’d picked up from the grocery store.

Sansa stepped back as he drew closer, her heels sliding onto the cool bathroom tiles. “I don’t—I don’t have anything. Any money, or…”

“Money?” The man chuckled and gently closed the minifridge. “I’m not here for your money, sweetheart.”

“Then tell me,” Sansa bit back, earning another low chuckle. “Tell me what you want.”

The man leaned up against the counter, one boot propped up on the face of the cabinets, fingers loose around her gun. Emerald eyes traveled over her before meeting her own. “You.”

Sansa felt her cheeks burn as she desperately wished this damn cabin had come with larger towels. “Then get it over with,” she whispered. The man’s lips parted slightly, but Sansa ignored him and took a trembling step towards him. “Do what you want with me,” she said. “Do it, then let me be in peace.” Another step. “But know I won’t feel it.” His head tilted down to keep her gaze. “I won’t feel a damn thing. I can’t,” she said hoarsely. “I can’t anymore.”

The man blinked. He cocked his head. Then a softness spread across his features, unhinging his jaw, taking the light out of his eyes. He stepped away, backing up towards the bed. “I’m not here to…do what I want with you,” he said slowly, looking sharply away as if the sight of her now burned. “I’m not that sort of man.”

Her cheeks felt hot, but this time from some strange stab of embarrassment in her stomach. Was he…offended she think that? When she was standing in a towel before this stranger with a gun? “I don’t care what _sort of man_ you are,” Sansa hissed, earning his gaze once more. “I want to know what you want and what the fuck you think I can give you, because I don’t know if you’ve looked around, but I don’t have a whole lot,” she spit out, her voice rising. “I don’t have anything to give you except myself, so either take that or leave.”

The man turned her gun over in his hands, then opened his jacket to slip it into his belt. “Get dressed,” he said quietly. “Then get some rest. We’ll leave at first light.”

Her mouth popped open. “Leave? Leave where?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Like hell it isn’t,” Sansa snapped.

A small smirk crossed his face, then he sank back to sit on the corner of the bed. “I think the guy with the gun gets to decide that, sweetheart,” he said, touching the handle.

“Tell me where we’re going, or I’m not leaving with you.”

“That so?” He pulled a face like he was thinking long and hard. “No cell signal, no neighbors for miles, no car, no gun, no coat. And no clothes, unless you do as I say and get dressed.”

Sansa fumed, chewing on her lip as the man watched her. “You won’t hurt me?” she said finally.

“Promise.”

“You won’t touch me?” He held up his hands. Sansa nodded, then looked over at her duffle bag. “I’m going to get dressed now,” she said, watching him watch her slide a somewhat clean pair of leggings and sweatshirt from the bag. Sansa flushed when she had to grab the panties, quickly hiding them in her pile of clothes. She turned to head into the bathroom, then froze when her fingers closed around the knob. “You know my name,” she said. “I deserve to know yours.”

The bed creaked behind her, then the man answered quietly, “Just call me Jaime.”

* * *

Through the sliver of moonlight jutting in from the cabin window, Jaime watched the girl’s figure moving gently beneath the quilt, her breathing unsteady. She wasn’t asleep yet, her mind likely still whirling with plans to escape the man sitting in the armchair beside her. Jaime winced at the idea and looked at the dark kitchen instead.

He’d never liked this part of a job, the watching and intimidating. It was bad enough that he walked in on Sansa in the shower, even if it did make the breaking and entering a little easier. He hated how she just assumed he was here to rape her…but he hated even more how she was ready to let him do it. Tywin hadn’t given him many details on the girl, only that she was a runaway someone wanted back. And that someone was willing to pay.

His gaze drifted back over to the bed, wandering over that sheet of red hair still damp and dark on the pillow, the way her lips were parted to let out small puffs of air. The rhythm of her chest had steadied, sleep curling over her muscles, coaxing them to relax. Jaime smiled at the sight—she had been so tense during their earlier conversation, like her body had snapped into some familiar state of submission. He’d seen it before, with other runaways. The kick-in of fight or flight, the trapped gaze of a animal who couldn’t do either.

Like this, Sansa was free. Asleep for a few more hours until dawn came and the morning light cast a sharp shadow on reality. Jaime wished she could stay this way.

But he had a job to do. A father to please. Some client to return this girl to.

Jaime sank deeper into the armchair and let his head fall back against the wall.

It was light when Jaime woke with a start, his hand flying to his belt. The gun was still there. He turned to glance at the bed. Empty. Jerking upright, Jaime’s gaze shot towards the door; it was open, and Sansa was standing right in the doorway, her back to him as she looked out.

“Hey!” Jaime shouted, jumping to his feet. She didn’t respond. Jaime strode across the room and grabbed her arm, spinning her around.

“Let go of me!” Sansa snarled, twisting to face him. But as Jaime’s gaze drifted beyond her, his eyes widened and a curse fell from his lips. “I’m not going anywhere, as you can tell,” she snapped.

Snow. Not a dusting like the day before. Real snow, the kind Jaime had only ever seen on TV, in nature documentaries. The stuff was piled up at least three feet, topped by an icy crust that growing as he watched. It wasn’t just snow. They were in the middle of a fucking blizzard.

“You can let go now.”

Sansa’s voice snapped Jaime back, and he promptly released her. “Sorry, I…” Jaime mumbled, raking a hand over his jaw. “Shit.”

The girl just rolled her eyes and shut the door behind her, stepping away from the threshold wettened by the flakes drifting in. “Yeah. Shit is right,” Sansa muttered, crossing back over to the bed. She ripped back the covers, settled on her side, and tugged the quilt up to her chin. “Wake me up when you make breakfast.”

Jaime stepped closer to the door to peer out the glass panel. All was white, as far as the eye could see. Maybe he could force his way through, but the car would be half-buried by now, and the girl…Jaime turned back towards her then made his way to the bed. “Sansa,” he said, perching on the corner.

She shifted beneath the quilt. “What.”

“Do you know how long the snow’s supposed to last?”

“How should I know?”

“Haven’t you heard the forecast from anyone in town? Maybe the woman at the Winter Town Bar?”

Sansa twisted to stare at him. “Is that how you found me? From Ros?”

“Next time you’re on the run, I’d be more careful about who you make friends with.”

The girl huffed. “She’s not my friend. Wouldn’t even offer me a job…” Sansa’s pale blue eyes shifted from Jaime to the window, and she was quiet for a moment, just staring at the glass nearly coated in snow. “The storm was supposed to pass us by. Less than a foot,” she said quietly, as if some realization was flooding in with the words. Her gaze moved back to Jaime. “And now I’m stuck inside a cabin in the middle of Fucking Nowhere Alaska with a man who wants to kidnap me.”

Jaime swallowed. _Well_ , he thought, drumming his fingers on his knee. _This is going to be problematic._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys don't mind the slow start...things should start to get fun in the next chapter.   
> Thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear your feedback!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back, and so excited to be sharing a story with you all again! I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post, so if you like this story, and if you like AU's, please check out my story "Downstream," a 1970s Jaime/Sansa AU. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and please share all of your thoughts below! I'd love to hear what you think about the story so far, and things you'd like to see in it.


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